Ceri Radford is Assistant Comment Editor of the Telegraph.

The seven sins of book reviewing

Paper Cuts, the New York Times book blog, has had a VaticanÂ moment and identified the 'seven deadly words' of hackneyed book reviewing. They are: poignant, compelling, intriguing, eschew, craft (used as a verb), muse (as a verb), and lyrical.

The blog's readers have, uh, crafted a compelling and intriguing response, with additional suggestions for verbal sins including nuanced, tour de force, lens ("The author explores American history through the lens of xyz"), searing, subtle, epic, 'much-anticipated debut', 'spare and elegant prose' and much more besides.

George Orwell, as ever, summarises the issue perfectly:

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?" (from Politics and the English Language)